Fashion designer Lange / THU 12-25-25 / Transcript ruiners / Old dagger carried by Scottish Highlanders / Right-eous path? / Footwear for a bride, perhaps / Vodka-and-pineapple juice cocktail popularized on "Sex and the City" / Letter after three consecutive rhyming letters / Ballon ___ (soccer star's award) / "___ the Limit" (posthumous hit for the Notorious B.I.G.)

Constructor: Sam Ezersky

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: "... LAUGHING all the way!" (51A: What's seen "all the way" through this puzzle?) — the puzzle depicts the first verse of "Jingle Bells," with lyrics appearing in a series of fill-in-the-blank clues; the final part of the verse, "... LAUGHING all the way!" is depicted visually in the grid by a series of laugh sounds found in circled squares embedded inside longer Across answers—the "laughs" stretch "all the way" from the NW to the SE corner of the grid:

The lyrics!:

• Dashing through the SNOW ... (4A)
• In a ONE-HORSE open sleigh ... (21A)
• O'er the fields WE GO ... (7D)
• LAUGHING all the way (51A)

The laughs!:

• LOLLYGAG (16A: Dawdle)
• BY THE HORNS (26A: One way to take a bull)
• RICHARD HARRIS (35A: First portrayer of Albus Dumbledore, the final live-action role in his long film career)
• WHITE HEELS (42A: Footwear for a bride, perhaps)
• BROUHAHA (57A: Ado)

Word of the Day: LIZ Lange (61A: Fashion designer Lange) — 

Liz Lange is an American fashion designer and businessperson. She is the creative director and CEO of Figue, and the founder of Liz Lange Maternity, which introduced form-fitting designer pregnancy wear in 1998. Lange has been called a pioneer in the apparel industry. // Lange has two children, Gus and Alice, and lives in Manhattan and in East Hampton, at the Grey Gardens estate. The setting of the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens, it was purchased by Lange in 2017.

She is the niece of businessman Saul Steinberg. (wikipedia)

• • •

This is an A+ theme concept. The theme execution, as well as the fill, kept trying to dampen my good time, but it's Christmas, goddammit! I choose joy! I choose to focus on that one moment when the puzzle's predicted "AHA" response (1A: Response to discovering the theme of a crossword) actually came true! I had drifted across the top of the grid ... noticed the first laugh syllable ... noticed the second "Jingle Bells" lyric ... and then while filling out the NE corner, it suddenly hit me, and I said, out loud, to no one, "Oh! LAUGHING all the way!" It happened here, just as I filled in UTILE (thus distracting me from the ugliness that is UTILE):

I knew right then the puzzle was going to "laugh" all the way across the grid, and if I'd stopped right there, right at the moment of true theme revelation, I think I would've told you "this is the best puzzle I've solved in many months." To have the puzzle literally sing the song, and then to drop little laughs in there like breadcrumbs ... all the way across the grid ... it's ingenious. It's also dense as hell—between the lyric answers and the laugh answers, there are nine themers, with density reaching really intense levels in the upper part of the grid (where SNOW crosses WE GO crosses LOLLYGAG abuts ONE-HORSE. Almost every Down up there has to cross two themers. SUPERSTATE has to cross three (3). HEADWRITER has to cross four (4!). That is nuts. Themers are fixed answers. Once you set them, they don't move, and the denser they are, the harder it is to build a clean grid around them, which may be why it feels kinda janky here and there. 

First of all, some of the theme answers are not, let's say, the strongest as stand-alone answers go. BY THE HORNS is slightly awkward, as are most prepositional phrases. WHITE HEELS are, I'm sure, a thing, but ... I dunno, felt pretty improvised, as puzzle answers go (WHITE HEELS, unshockingly, is a debut). But my biggest problem with the theme execution was the placement of "WE GO"—it's both misoriented and out of order. The first part of the lyric is up top, then the next part. is a few lines down ... so the next part should keep this pattern going—"WE GO" should appear as an Across answer (like the other lyric answers) somewhere between ONE-HORSE and LAUGHING. You have laughs drifting down the grid, you should have the song drifting down the grid—and you mostly do! It's just this one silly Down answer that's gotten things all loused up. Make "WE GO" Across and put it between ONE-HORSE and LAUGHING and you're perfect. Hell, if it's too hard to make "WE GO" fit in any of those 4-letter Across spaces, then just use "O'ER" as your fill-in-the-blank word. Doesn't get much more crosswordy than "O'ER!" This is the part "O'ER" was born to play, put him in! Anything but yanking "WE GO" out of sequence and wrenching it into Down position. This is the problem with having such a great idea—botch the execution even a little, and it's jarring. 

The fill in general was on the weak side. Not a Deadhead so LESH looked like a typo, honestly (this is LESH's fifth NYTXW appearance, first in eight years). UTAHN will always be my demonym nemesis (demonymesis!). Ugly as sin. SIREE should never be out without his YES companion. Window brands (PELLA) do not make for happy holiday grids. THEEU will never look good in the grid. Nor will CIT (ouch). LOL at G'BYE (another debut). That's ... inventive. Desperately inventive. See also "LET HIM." Just making up new answers out here today, Merry Christmas! As for EFFS (63A: Transcript ruiners) ... why isn't that just ELMS or something simple and nice like that? The worst answer of the day for me, though, was SLEAZO. What is with the "O," who says that? You'd call someone a SLEAZE (47D: Slimeball). A "slimeball" is a SLEAZE. SLEAZO sounds like a derelict clown. Or, like, Bingo's mortal enemy. "There was a clown who hunted dogs and SLEAZO was his name-o..." Nine times out of ten, you ask someone to fill in the missing letter and make a noun out of SLEAZ-, they're putting in an "E." 'Cause that's the term. SLEAZO, yeesh. Yeesho. This is a long and bitter way of saying I had to track down a mistake today, and SLEAZE was its name (-o). 

Bullets:

• 31A: Old dagger carried by Scottish Highlanders (DIRK) — crosswordese of yore! Also the name of an actor I love, DIRK Bogarde. He hasn't been a clue since 1998. Probably the right call, but I'd love to see him come striding into the grid on a Friday or Saturday. He's fabulous.

• 40A: Letter after three consecutive rhyming letters (IOTA) — those three letters ... I dunno, Dancer Prancer Shmancer? Surely it's three of the -ETAs. Which ones? I don't care.
• 22D: Someone who might ask "Mother, may I?" (NUN) — so the "Mother" is the Mother Superior in a convent.
• 11D: Vodka-and-pineapple juice cocktail popularized on "Sex and the City" (FLIRTINI) — I'd sooner die than waste my one cocktail a day on this abomination, buuuuuut I'm always going to cheer for cocktails in the grid, even in their more repugnant incarnations. 
• 41A: Right-eous path? (EAST) — ending on a high note. This clue is insane. It's doing a funny little dance just for your amusement. Just trying to liven up an otherwise forgettable answer. And, you know what, little clue? Good job. ("Right" is EAST ... on a map)

A few 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲 now before I go sit in the dark with my coffee and watch the sun rise (my favorite time of day). Note: PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME ANY MORE PET PICS, I'M ALL FULL UP FOR THIS YEAR, thank you.

Bella is hard to see in this picture but she needs you to know that she is there, being good (on the pillow, bottom left)

[Thanks, Martha!]

Bowie is here to make sure none of the kids f*** with Santa anymore. "Just sit down, state your toy wish, and then move along. Hands to yourself. Santa's beard is not a toy for your grubby hands, Timmy. Beat it!"

[Thanks, Barbara!]

Another in the "hostage photo" genre. Poor Finnegan. Finnegan wants to begin again, preferably without the costume. Less costume, more treats!

[Thanks, Lana!]

Billy Eckstine here has quite the life. Used to be a wild cat, now he's got fancy Italian digs (seriously, he lives in Italy, this is Italy) and lounges on the couch and enjoys the Christmas lights while his human caretakers bring him bonbons, I assume.

[Thanks, Tara!]

Rikki failed out of Stealthy Commando Snow Dog school because he kept smiling and his pink tongue would give his position away.  So now he just chases balls and enjoys the snow like a good dog.

[Thanks, Beverly!]

Finally, there's Belle, who may or may not have committed a Christmas murder. Did Santa really need Comet? Guess we'll find out!

[Thanks, Lori!]

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Cooked rice, in Korean cuisine / WED 12-24-25 / Shrub that sounds regretful / Kosher barbecue option / Class where you learn how to get a tan? / Silly character on the "Sesame Street" segment "Elmo's World" / Keenan's partner in comedy / Free copy of a film sent to awards show voters / No-clothes college gathering / Pesky biter, informally

Constructor: Ella Dershowitz

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: FAKE IDS (56A: Aids for minors buying liquor ... or a hint to 17-, 27- and 44-Across) — answers with the initials "I.D." that are in some way misleading:

Theme answers:

• ITALIAN DRESSING (17A: Salad topping that's actually fromAmerican and is rarely consumed in its namesake land)
• ISAK DINESEN (27A: "Out of Africa" author actually named Karen Christentze von Blixen-Finecke)
• INDEPENDENCE DAY (44A: Observance celebrating a decision actually made on July 2—the date when John Adams predicted it would be celebrated)

Word of the Day: NAKED PARTY (29D: No-clothes college gathering) —

A naked party, also known as nude party, is a party where the participants are required to be nude. The parties have become associated with college campuses and with college-aged people; they gained prominence after naked parties were organized at Brown University and Yale University. While the roots of naked parties come from the nudism movements and campus streaking, the modern "naked party" movement appears to have its roots at Brown University in the 1980s. Attendees of naked parties often report that they stop feeling awkward after just a few minutes since everyone has disrobed before entering the party and since everyone's nudity is accepted, regardless of body type. According to reports, most naked college parties are sex-free. At Brown University, the nakedness is "more of an experiment in social interaction than a sexual experience". (wikipedia)

• • •

The theme ends up being pretty clever, but I can't say I enjoyed solving the puzzle that much. We got off on the wrong foot, the puzzle and I—the very first clue I looked at made me mad—and the relationship never fully recovered. Right up front, I get humanized A.I., which ... look, SIRI has been around a while, been in crosswords a while, we've all just come to accept it as a fully normalized thing. But now, in an age of extreme A.I. proliferation, with the A.I. bandwagon visibly careening out of control, with A.I. trying to insinuate itself into literally every aspect of our lives, SIRI now feels like the A.I. Trojan Horse—the thing that got everybody used to treating machines like people. And while that's not the puzzle's fault, the puzzle definitely becomes part of the problem when it decides to refer to SIRI as "whom" (1A: Whom you might say "hey" to every day)."Whom!?" Why isn't "whom" in scare quotes? SIRI isn't a "whom" (no matter what "she"'s told you). It's a "what." You know what I've owned for almost 13 years? An iPhone. And do you know what (that's right, what) I haven't talked to once in all that time? Not once? That's correct. SIRI. SIRI is a machine. Not a person. SIRI is, in fact, like the answer it sits on top of, a TOOL. Can't "think," can't "feel," can't "imagine." The entire world is trying to humanize machines, to all of our detriments; the puzzle does not have to voluntarily assist in this endeavor. SIRI is a spy—not your assistant, not your friend. As for this clue, all you need is scare quotes for "Whom" and you're good. That acknowledges that people do talk to SIRI as if "she" is a person, but also acknowledges that that behavior is delusional. 

But again, I think the theme is clever. I didn't bother reading all those long-ass clues, though. I'm here to solve, not read a damn novel. Also, I didn't need to do all that reading to get the answers. I stopped reading the ITALIAN DRESSING clue after two words ([Salad topping...]) because ... that was enough. Same with the clue for ISAK DINESEN, though I guess it was four words in that case (["Out of Africa" author]). For INDEPENDENCE DAY, I read [Observation celebrating blah blah blah] and just looked at the letters I had in place and pieced together the "Observation" from there. So really, only the revealer gave me any real solving pleasure, in that it explained why all that blah blah blah I didn't read was in the puzzle. 

So the theme is solid. It's all the stuff besides the theme that wasn't really thrilling me today. That patch in the far north seems really rough, compared to the rest of the grid. APA next to MR. NOODLE (?) (6D: Silly character on the "Sesame Street" segment "Elmo's World") next to AIDY Bryant. A professional org. not everyone will know alongside two proper nouns not everyone will know (one of which I didn't know), all crossing OYE ... that bit feels held together with duct tape. The rest seems more soundly built. The long Downs are nice in the SW (ILL-ADVISED alongside CORNER PUB), but in the SE ... meh. I think NAKED PARTY is supposed to be a highlight, but that just got a shrug and "what?" from me. Never heard of such a thing, perhaps because it has the Blandest Name In The History of Parties. Are you really calling your party where guests are naked a "NAKED PARTY?" This seems like more Yale shit, honestly. I mean, it is more Yale shit. Brown and Yale apparently gave us whatever these parties are (see "Word of the Day," above), and the constructor went to Yale, so ... this answer is really just ELI in different clothes. Or no clothes, I guess.  I have a Yale sticker on the rear window of my car and a Yale-attending daughter (home for the holidays as of yesterday!), so, uh, nothing against Yale. I just have Yale exhaustion where crosswords are concerned, and finding out the unimaginatively named NAKED PARTY started out as a Yale thing has reexhausted me. 

Bullets:

• 36A: Shout at a Real Madrid game ("GOL!") — yes I wrote in "OLE!" A crossword reflex if there ever was one.
• 37A: Kosher barbecue option (BEEF RIB) — this is really just a "barbecue option." I mean, that would be enough. The "Kosher" part threw me, because I honestly didn't know that some cuts of beef are not kosher. Apparently, the hindquarters of a cow are not kosher. If you are Jewish, you likely know this. Not me, though. Somehow only learning this now. Sometimes I appreciate when the puzzle can teach me things. Thanks, puzzle. Don't care about NAKED PARTYs, but what parts of the cow are kosher, that seems like useful knowledge.
• 61A: Shrub that sounds regretful (RUE) — So ... just "regret," then. Six letters. That's all I need. That's all anyone needs. You wanna go "shrub," go full shrub, don't give me the crutch.

• 11D: Class where you learn how to get a tan? (TRIG) — hoo boy, best clue of the day, for sure. Absolutely stumped me. Needed all the crosses and then let out an audible "d'oh!" Just as TRIG is short for "trigonometry," "tan" here is short for "tangent" (something you might calculate in Trigonometry class). Read all about it.
• 37D: Cooked rice, in Korean cuisine (BAP) — BibimBAP is one of the most delicious dishes in all God's creation. There was a great Korean place on University Ave. in Ann Arbor where I first had it in the '90s. Since I now think of "bibimbap" as one word, I never thought about what the various parts of it meant. Which is to say, I had no idea BAP meant "cooked rice." But there's definitely cooked rice in "bibimbap," so ... it tracks! 

Enough puzzle. Time for 🌲🐈Holiday Pet Pics🐕🌲! Note: PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME ANY MORE PET PICS, I'M ALL FULL UP FOR THIS YEAR, thank you.

Here's Bailey making the universal cat "Nope!" face. As you can see, she is having to be held in place for this photo, because otherwise she'd be tearing that thing off. At least they didn't try to put the hood all the way over her ears. Honestly looks more "Little Red Riding Bailey" than "Santa Bailey"

[Thanks, Helen!]

Daisy's working here. Guarding the perimeter. Just waiting for something to bay or bark at. She's heard there might be reindeer afoot. Not on her watch!

[Thanks, Steve!]

I'm getting vertigo just looking at this picture of Ketchup. Which way is up, Ketchup? Why aren't you red, Ketchup? What a great name. Gonna get a black lab and name it Mustard. Makes just as much sense.

[Thanks, Jaime!]

Dave in Ithaca (on the radio!) has sent in pictures of his cats Tom and Felix. Actually, I'm not sure that Tom didn't send them himself—right after he took this selfie.

[Thanks, Dave!]

Lastly, it's Georgie, who has the panicked look of a cat about to hijack a sleigh. "Get in, man, get in! Hurry! Before the fat man gets back. Hey, hey, you got any more catnip?" "Uh, no, not on me, man." "It'd be a lot cooler if you did ... oh well, let's ride!"

[Thanks, Anne!]

See you next time.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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❤️ Support this blog ❤️: 

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